Facebook may venture into the healthcare field.

With reimbursement penalties starting up on Oct. 1 for providers who fail to adequately share patient data, many physicians are reporting struggles with exchanging health data between disparate EHR systems, reports The New York Times.

Horsham, PA, September 23, 2014 -- Office Practicum, a leading provider of electronic health records software (EHR) for the specialty of pediatric medicine, is pleased to announce that it has acquired the assets of Workflow.com, including their web-based multi-specialty EHR and Practice Management software.

Only 15 percent of all stakeholders report that they find any value in the use of unique Health Plan Identifier within electronic transactions adopted under HIPAA, according to a survey from the Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange.

In a final rule published Friday, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) updated its requirement that eligible providers must use 2014 Edition certified electronic health record (EHR) technology (CEHRT) to qualify for Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Programs payments this year. Instead, they can now use the 2011 Edition CEHRT or a combination of 2011 and 2014 Edition CEHRT for an EHR reporting period in 2014.

In the wake of the Community Health Systems (CHS) disclosure that hackers breached its computer system and accessed personal but not health data it held on 4.3 million people, a representative of the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) joined the monthly Health Information Trust Alliance (HITRUST) cyber threat information call to discuss work being done to build a better public-private partnership on cyber threats facing the healthcare industry.

As healthcare systems implement EHR systems with patient portals for sharing test results and other health information in order to comply with Meaningful Use requirements, many have expressed concern that patients may be unable to comprehend their test results outside of a physician consult. A new study by University of Michigan researchers indicates that these critics may be right.

In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Community Health Systems (CHS), the nation’s leading for-profit publicly-traded operator of general acute-care hospitals, disclosed that this spring, a group likely originating in China was able to bypass its computer security measures and copy non-medical information on approximately 4.5 million individuals either treated at or referred to one of its facilities in the past five years.